Thursday, March 23, 2017

The die was most likely cast when the Republic began to compromise its own rules for limiting and distributing power. The system they had created was a reflection of the tribal realities of the early republic. In order to keep any one family from gaining too much power, they systematically limited the time anyone served in office. The system also forced an apprenticeship on those who went into public life. This had the benefit of making public men buy into the system. Therefore they were willing to defend it.

That meant the system had a policing mechanism to sort out enemies before they could cause trouble. An ambitious young man could not skip any steps on his way up the ladder, so once he got up the ladder, he was not agreeing to any changes in the process. Defending the system was a way to defend one’s prerogatives, but also a way to defend the system from lunatics. Verpus Maximus may be smart and talented, but he was not only going to wait his turn, he was going to do all the jobs necessary to prove his worth.

This system started to break down with the rivalry of Sulla and Marius. Sulla was the first man to hold the office of consul twice. He also got away with marching an army on Rome itself, in order to defeat his rival, Marius. Both of these acts were supposed to be disqualifying, but exceptions were made for expediency. Sulla sided with the Senate so the Senate bent the rules to serve themselves. A good case can be made that this is the point when it was all over for the Republic.

It was just a matter of time before someone used Sulla as a precedent.

The die-casting point that sealed the fate of the USA is a little bit easier to determine, in my opinion. The 1965 Naturalization Act that eliminated the restrictions on immigration by national origin is the obvious one.

Notice that in both cases, it was abandoning tradition and loosening vital restrictions that proved to be the fatal act.

96 Comments:

FDR's third term also signaled the end of self-imposed limitations, somewhat like the Roman example. FDR was a populist who shredded traditional American government, and started building the unaccountable permanent government.

Sulla was the first man to hold the office of consul twice. He also got away with marching an army on Rome itself, in order to defeat his rival, Marius. Both of these acts were supposed to be disqualifying, but exceptions were made for expediency.

And also because he killed those who opposed him. It would not surprise me to see an American politician emulate the Sullan "precedents" of "death squads to disappear your enemies" and "putting heads on the rostrum".

It's like the Rule of Law. Your side gets to break it occasionally because you're "good people" and have "good intentions". But it corrodes the respect needed from other people towards following the Rule of Law and proper procedures. Soon it is corrupted and people only pay it lip service.

The first Roosevelt's creation of an overtly activist federal government in his "Square Deal" struck me as a hard left turn away from the American tradition of the feds not noticing or caring about the little guy. He set the stage for the income tax and the mass influx of women into American politics, and Ann Coulter has documented what came of that in terms of the end of small government. We all know that Democrats had a habit of getting power, holding power, and rewarding their friends for waiting in line at the seat of power - but the Republicans had acted as a federal oligarchy for the plutocrats, which meant the federal government was a good bit more detached from the small potatoes of state, city, and individual affairs until Roosevelt I.

SCOTUS becomes supra-legislature. Problems they caused can't be solved and the logical consequence was the Civil War. Doesn't help they kept making the situation worse.

Lincoln ushered in something new. Technical term is up for grabs. Federalized Republic?

USA Republic 2.0: 1912 with the election of Woodrow Wilson.

Wilson is the culmination of the post-Civil War Progressive Movement in the USA. Entangles the USA with Europe while tying the entire Modern World together with the Federal Reserve system. Screws up the victory in WW1 so badly the Senate rejects the treaty. Worst foreign policy President in American history.

Problems from Republic 1.0 still exists. Whatever 3.0 looks like, the first step is addressing 1.0's failure. If SCOTUS is above Congress, then Congress will always shove responsibility to SCOTUS whenever possible.

The motivation to by the ruling elites to import a new electorate through mass immigration with the 1965 Act was only possible with the decision of US vs Wong Kim Ark, where the 14th amendment was applied to children of foreigners born on US soil. And then came the crushing blow two years later in 1967 with the Afroyim vs Rusk, where dual citizenship was declared a right for an Israeli. As Sobran's famous saying "dual loyalty would be an improvement", which today wouldnt just apply to Jews, but all immigrants group from the post '65 immigration wave. The lie of the 1965 Act was that it wouldnt drastically change the demographics of the US. Now we are told that we're evil Nazis if we do anything to stop it.

FDR was just following in Wilson's footsteps, albeit with better PR (Americans came to hate Wilson, and when he was replaced, his replacement ran on a platform and with the motto of "return to normalcy."

And Wilson was just building on McKinnley who was just building on Lincoln, etc. I think that's the turning point; Lincoln, and the ascendance of the proto-socialist totalitarian busybody progressive movement, and their use of Lincoln's war as an excuse to shut down traditional American voices. But it took decades to completely crystalize.

Looking Glass wrote:Problems from Republic 1.0 still exists. Whatever 3.0 looks like, the first step is addressing 1.0's failure. If SCOTUS is above Congress, then Congress will always shove responsibility to SCOTUS whenever possible.Congress needs to assert itself and start impeaching federal judges who clearly act beyond their authority. Start with that idiot Hawaiian or the 9th Circus Court. SCOTUS will fall in line after a few examples are made.

Taking a narrow view, the 1965 Naturalization Act can reasonably be assigned as a start as it's an obvious act with measurable repercussions. I assign it more broadly as the seeds for the 60s progressivism were laid well prior. G. Edward Griffin's interview of Yuri Bezmenov points is instructive in this regard.

I aver that while 1964-65 was a bad "year," far worse was 1913.The Seventeenth Amendment utterly eviscerated federalism. The creation of the central bank assigned the monetary power to a private banking cartel. The Sixteenth Amendment by application eliminated any hope of privacy in matters of money or finances.

These disastrous changes occurred without having to radically alter the genetic makeup of the polity.

Then, once the Civil Rights Act enshrined unequal treatment under the law, Hart-Celler was just the coup de grace (albeit, given that it's anything but merciful, it was really just an NKVD bullet to the head.)

As I see it, however, the USA was already mortally wounded half a century earlier.

In my opinion, they killed Rome by allowing the massive importation of slaves. It forced the small family farms off of the land. This changed the racial complexion of their society. We are importing foreigners to drive down wages, and making it a crime to be white and male. Things change and things stay the same.

Dating the fatal blow to 104 years ago really informs us how much inertia existed a the end of the 19th century.

I figure it was all used up by the 1964-1982 bear market, but the end of the secular bear market in bonds in 1981 created a historically unique opportunity to rapidly burn through residual capital via the "magic" of credit creation and the filling of an Ocean of Bonds, of IOU's not in any way possible to deliver.

I've lived my entire adult life in the nation-state equivalent of a headless chicken.

"This system started to break down with the rivalry of Sulla and Marius. Sulla was the first man to hold the office of consul twice."

--Marius' record-breaking five consecutive consulships (104-100BC) precede Sulla's two, nonconsecutive terms. In this respect, it was Marius who was the FDR and to some scandal too, as Plutarch notes.

"The people had never before bestowed so many consulships on any one man, except on Valerius Corvinus only, and he, too, they say, was forty-five years between his first and last; but Marius, from his first, ran through five more, with one current of good fortune."

Could it possibly be that the reason for the 1965 Naturalization Act was a profound change in this country by the US Supreme Court? Specifically, I am referring to the entirely new "right" created by the 1962 Court decision, Baker v Carr. This moved the USA in the direction of democracy and away from a republic. This is where the "one man, one vote" phrase was invented. Baker v Carr only applied to Federal elections (except the presidency) and two years later, the same court extended the rule to state elective office as well. By 1965, it would be clear to those who think about these things that in a country where warm bodies are counted by the Census and political power distributed accordingly, in the face of collapsing birth rates, the future would belong to those STATES who brought in the most foreign citizens. Perhaps the 1965 Naturalization Act was merely acting on the opportunity created by the Supreme Court.

For me personally, the two acts that set this country on the road to ruin were both passed in 1913.....the 16th Amendment that gave the Federal government the authority to tax income and the 17th Amendment that made the US Senators elected by popular vote, instead of representing their own state legislature. Seven years later, women were given the right to vote by the 19th Amendment. Now we are a century down the road from these Amendments and can see the results for what they are.

There's any number of watershed events, depending on how long your horizon may be. But the damning thing is the consistent trend, which is (as noted in the OP above) a persistent abandonment of historic defenses.

It is rare for any great nation to forestall the great decline that monotonously follows great achievement. The British Empire didn't alter the pattern of rise and fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire before her. Neither strayed far from the pattern of the Mongols, or of Rome's time at her peak, and Rome didn't differ greatly from Egypt or Babylon.

There are, of course, variations. No two empires are ever the same, but in the cycles of rise and fall no two have ever been greatly different either.

The US hegemony is visibly crumbling. Each successive error is as much a symptom of prior decline as it is a cause of future ignominy, as much farce as tragedy.

The real questions are:- how violently will the Empire end?- what will remain of civilisation after?

It took World War One to finish the Austro-Hungarians. It took World War two to finish the British.

@12 Impeachment is too cumbersome. Congress needs to establish a tribunal to decide whether judges have failed to meet the "good conduct" constitutional requirement for tenure. "Good conduct" was a well-established legal term by the time of the constitution. The tribunal should be small, be mostly non-judges, have low barriers to bringing cases, and explicitly be mandated to remove judges who issue published (precedental) decisions that ignore or go beyond the constitution or statutes as written.

To the 1965 Immigration Act, I would add the catastrophic Civil Rights Act of 1964. This enshrined Black privilege and White guilt and effectively turn the Federal Government into the true State Church, the arbiter and enforcer of all morality. It made the White population unable to protests the Third World immigrant flood. Two nails in our coffin.

It's important to remember that smart guys will spend many, many hours trying to figure out how to min/max a gaming system. All Power Systems will get 10s of thousands of hours spent trying to find a way to "game" the system for more power.

Once you find a way to grab power that has a really hard cost to countering, you've shifted the system into something else. What happened with Pres. Jefferson & Consul Sulla. It's much of the reason why all Human Systems go through Rise & Decline cycles. We just happen to be on the downside of at least a decline cycle. Hopefully not a full Empire collapse.

Hopefully, Trump can find his Belisarius.

This does tie in with the current problems in the House about Healthcare. Because they twisted Chief Justice Roberts' arm enough to least the Administration win in the King case, with one of the worst justifications in a while (not that it wouldn't be topped soon after), there is now Interest Groups around keeping Obamacare. Most of which back Ryan.

This is why our G-E is going to hang this "failure" on Ryan. And move to get rid of him.

@23 DrAndroSF

In the "we really shouldn't be surprised" category, most of the effects of the Civil Rights Act has been co-opted to over-promote Women into positions. Nearly all but previously wealthy Blacks got shafted because of it.

Some might think that Progressives hate Blacks with a passion only eclipsed by their hatred of White Men. And they would be correct.

There's also a multi-layered issue with people almost never cut their own throat. Few are that ideological. Even with the Progressives, they can't actually understand the Muslims will gleefully kill them until the knife is personally cutting their throat. In larger Strategic terms, it's suicide by system, but in their solipsistic personal view they don't see the trend & reality.

It's why these systems almost always end in some for of Populist Leader taking complete control. The Self-Interest & Contradictions simply build up too much that the only way to solve the problem is a fairly violent removal of the groups that have built their own self-interest at the cost of everyone else. Most of the time the problems tend to be readily knowable to most of the parties involved, but MPAI and that it applies to leaders as well.

Which probably explains the instinctive response from the Globalists about any form of Populism. They view it less like a challenge and more as an existential threat, yet they can't actually put their finger on why. They're going to really hate what comes next if they win.

The system started to break down long before Marius and Sulla, though the overarching point of the analysis is spot on. The balance of competing powers wasn't, well, balanced, and the various powers kept assuming more power to (as they saw it) right things. Sulla was trying to fix a broken system by reining in the Tribunes, who had been given somewhat arbitrary powers in order to carry out their duties and had started to abuse those powers.

I agree with Looking Glass. The court system in the US is a near perfect analog to the tribunes in that the powers they hold were once constrained by conventions which have nearly eroded completely away. Federal courts only give a passing nod to the document upon which they're supposed to be basing their decisions. The judiciary needs to be curbed, but if it's done extra-constitutionally we'll end up in the same boat as the Romans were when Sulla resigned.

To me, every tradition abandoned, every restriction loosened had its roots in an electorate lost in the haze of rising social mood.

Yes, it's my monomania, but the USA's citizenry stopped jealously guarding its founding principles almost before the ink was dry in 1787.

The Revolutionary War occurred despite Americans having a higher standard of living than Brits in the home islands.

Americans squandered the wealth of America 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0 Every Single Time. WHY??? There has to be a reason John Q. Public simply couldn't be bothered. For those too young to remember, most of the Greatest Generation were INVETERATE racists. Most Greatest Gen WASPs couldn't stand Roman Catholics.

Yet now we have zero WASPs on the SCOTUS. (((Fake Americans))) aided by Teddy K. Roman Catholics birthed Hart-Celler.

Why did the vast majority of Americans simply sit on their hands during all this?

Social Mood. The Socionomic Hypothesis is the only consistent rationale for why huge numbers of people, acting as a herd, did NOTHING as the system was swapped right out from under their noses.

The monetary, economic and Utopian public policy insanity of the last 63 years float entirely on illusions of trust and optimism pumped up to Hindenburg proportions.

I think the bond lows last August lit a match. All we await is for the flames to emerge into visibility.

History indicates that what we're looking at. But then history doesn't repeat exactly, so there is some hope.

Personally, while I agree with the comments about Marbury vs. Madison, I'd say the Republic was slowly dying from that point, but held out until Lincoln.

With the defeat of the south the US became a democratic empire, with the Federal government slowly becoming more tyrannical over time. The 16th amendment with income tax, the 17th amendment, the Fed, the New Deal, the Civil Rights Act, and the 1965 Naturalization Act were all symptoms of the increasing tyranny of the federal government. Until finally, with the changes in 2001 and the implementation of a full surveillance state by Bush the Lesser, we became a full tyranny.

Trump is working within the tyrannical government in what is probably a vain attempt to restore the democratic empire he grew up with. The only thing that gives me hope is that God has obviously taken a hand in matters and is working behind the scenes. Who knows what his plans are though.

For those interested, Dr Jim Penman has written a recent book outlining his research into the biological mechanisms that explain why civilisations rise and fall.

For example, the theory goes onto explain why Rome went from a monarchy, to republican institutions, to empire and then devolved into barbarism.

It won't come as a surprise to many here but the reason lies in culture and what he terms as religious cultural technologies. What will surprise is how he threads it together and what it means for our current age.

So as not to put anyone off, Christianity is held as a becon of hope for our future.

Even after all these centuries, I still have to deal with this guy? The record from the early Republic was kind of hazy, even to us, so it's not clear about holding the consulship more than once. But it wasn't normal.

What is definite, is that it was me that broke that old tradition. I held the consulship seven times, starting nearly twenty years before that punk Sulla.

The rot is so deep now that Congress (the people's house?? sure, whatever...)is watched by Wall St. See what congressman are investing in and you got a sure winner. Insider trading rules do not apply to congress.

They go into congress as commoners, leave as millionaires, and untouchable by the law.

You thought Obamacare was going to be savaged by the Rs? So they claimed. Ha. The stock price of United Health Group and Humana have quintupled since Obamacare was forced on us.

BTW this is muck like how the USSR's KGB men became Russian oligarchs.

You may have heard about the recent Rockville Rapes. I don't know why they got so much play, something like that is happening around here in the DC area all the time these days. But this one struck a nerve, when they put a 17 year old boy and 18 year old boy, both from El Salvador, in a ninth grade class where they raped a 14 year old American girl.

Anyway, in that area in 1960 the foreign born population was 1%. Today, it's 51%. Repeat, FIFTY ONE PERCENT. And officials here are scrambling around like crazy because that rape really caused an outcry around here. Again, I don't know why. In my county next door we just caught a kebab raping a 12 year old boy in the showers of at our recreation center, and that got shrugged off. But the latest rape has taken hold and people are outraged.

Anyway, 51% Not Americans in that Rockville, MD zone. I bet where I live in Koreatown across the river that the percentage is higher.

What does this augur for the future in this area? Nothing good at all.

The 1965 Naturalization Act that eliminated the restrictions on immigration by national origin is the obvious one.

That was the result of 50+ years of non stop (((lobbying))) since the creation of the FED & IRS

white racist kills Black Man

Must be fake crisis actor to distract from moslems. Why would someone go from Baltimore to NY to kill a black when you can't swing a dead cat in inner city Baltimore without hitting a black tranny crack ho? #TravelMurse

The empire is dead, there isn't much point in mourning it. Better to learn from it and move forward with eyes open. I suspect that the concept of the US breaking up into multiple nations/regions is the more likely one. Once things go hot and the yoke of the Feds is thrown off no one will go back to that.

We still need to remove the invaders but even if success I still think the different regions in the US become self governing.

Turns out my grandfather was a very high ranking freemason. No one except for his wife new until a buck of them showed up to his funeral and they covered a bunch of expenses to do with his end of life Healthcare and funeral.My grandmother then received a monthly check from them for the rest of her days.

One point to compare Rome and the US: in Octavian`s day the army was 1/3 mercs. In Lincoln`s day, well I don`t know the percentage, but so many of Lincoln`s Hessions were captured that one confederate officer asked another, ``Are we at war with Germany?``

General lee was asking to take his forces and engage is geurilla tactics towards the end of the war. If he had done it, the outcome of the war could have been very different. Those guerilla tactics were hugely successful in the revolution.

Maybe it's best to think of it as a long, secular downtrend over decades, but there are pull-backs and relative peaks. But each time it peaks, it's a little lower.

Thus we can find relatively good years in the mix. At time frames when Positive Trends overlapped and Negative Trends weren't all rising.

I think it's 1962? that's the best year of the post-Korea to post-Vietnam period. 1994 comes out okay of the post-Soviet period. You can probably hone in on years in the 1920s and 1890s that were quite good. Basically the periods where you aren't having to, yet, pay for the previous levels of stupid.

At the same time, it's also important to remember that we live at the end of thousands of years of Response/Counter-Response. So while the Trends are in, it doesn't mean things can't be changed. It's just a matter of the costs involved.

But always remember, no matter how big the Trend or Process, all Natural Systems are bounded. Nothing is supreme that is of this World. Always important to remember.

Personally, while I agree with the comments about Marbury vs. Madison, I'd say the Republic was slowly dying from that point, but held out until Lincoln.

With the defeat of the south the US became a democratic empire, with the Federal government slowly becoming more tyrannical over time. The 16th amendment with income tax, the 17th amendment, the Fed, the New Deal, the Civil Rights Act, and the 1965 Naturalization Act were all symptoms of the increasing tyranny of the federal government. Until finally, with the changes in 2001 and the implementation of a full surveillance state by Bush the Lesser, we became a full tyranny.

This is my thinking as well. While there are some very good analogies between the Roman Republic and the USA today, I'd hold that the American Republic has been a republic in name only since the Civil War. Lincoln was our Tiberius, and the American civil war is equivalent to the long stretch of time from Sulla through both triumvirates. Lets also recall that the Romans never considered themselves a monarchy/empire until Diocletian, and went to great lengths to convince themselves that they were indeed a republic. (Imperator wasn't even used as a proper title until Vespasian.)

I'd say that the US is no longer a republic but rather an empire with an elected emperor, senate, and bureaucracy. The facade of self-determination by the people or the states has long ago fallen away.

I'd liken our time today to that of the late Empire and Valens agreeing to allow the Visigoths to settle in Moesia. Have we had our Adrianople yet? Or can we avoid that fate?

Our visitors are a different situation. Our empire is so shockingly fragile that few realize it. Shutting down power to a major ufban area is catasrophic, that level of systemic fragility didn't exist in roman times.I'd say that plays in our favor in terms of the visigoths not being able to run to far amok.

What has to be done is very obvious....the African vote cant be 87 percent democrat it has to be much less....to do this the republican party has to send the clear message we want you we need you we love you.... Anyone that thwarts the shift in the African vote to the republican party where it started doesnt love the country thats what will save it and its doable

No, the die-casting occurred over a long period of time. It consisted of dumb, racist, irrational WASPs insisting on opposing the moral and ethical inclusion of women and minorities in the body politic.

Consider that the purposes of the 1924 Immigration Act was primarily twofold: to drastically curb the importation of Southern European Catholics and Eastern European Jews, and to drastically reduce overall immigration to allow the many non-Northwestern European immigrants to assimilate. Then consider that many of the less desireable never did assimilate. Rep. Celler, a descendant of German Jews, opposed the 1924 Immigration Act, opposed the 1952 Immigration Act (which refined the 1924 version), and co-sponsored the 1965 Immigration Act (which scrapped the 1952 Act). Amd, his rationale was untenable -- limiting immigration to people similar to our founding stock hurts the feelings of other peoples. Who cares! Other countries have restrictions on immigration pr visitation that discriminate against me. I don't care; it's their right to regulate entry to their countries. Pandering to others has gained us nothing but grief.

Hart-Celler may have been the nail in the coffin, but it was teed up from our beginning. Our founders and framers, who were virtually all Protestant Englishmen (excepting a handful of Catholics, Irishmen, and Scots) ignored Vattel who said a nation cannot successfully host multiple religions. Our founders and framers demonstrated that a Protestant-based society can work successfully with a Catholic minority, but they showed their foolishness and ignorance early when dealing with the Islamist Barbary pirates, informing them (incorrectly) that we were not a Christian nation and were receptive to all religions. This early cucking for Allah did not work then, and it does not work now. It fails in assuming that Islam is a religion, rather than a predatory political ideology that masquerades and rent seeks as a religion while fundamentally violating natural law.

Our founding fathers were not familiar with Islam. Our Constitution needs to be amended to take the truth about Islam and other immoral pseudoreligions (eg, Judaism) into account.

"I agree with them all, but gotta go with Looking Glass on Marbury v Madison."

Yeah. Even Commiefornia voted to cut off all benefits for illegal aliens in the 90s, but was overruled by the kritarchy. Same thing with homosexual "marriage" later on-- overruled by a homosexual judge.

@EHIf true, this might be a factor as well. Someone linked to it earlier, but I'm reposting it because of its importance.

Looks like the reason that Nunes admitted the surveillance on Trump is that he knew that Freedom Watch was going to be publicly releasing evidence from a whistleblower, showing that the CIA and NSA had been engaged in widespread systematic illegal surveillance including on Supreme Court justices, 156 other judges, and prominent private individuals, apparently for purposes of blackmail.

Plus an allegation that the CIA was involved in manipulating voting results in Florida in 2008...

Whistleblower is a former CIA/ NSA contractor, and apparently has been stonewalled by the FBI and Congress for 2 years. 47 hard drives/ 600 million pages of info.

citizen-Pepe wrote:@1031 the Lord God said He will bless those who bless Israel and curse those who curse Israel. Better if u learn that the easy wayModern American Ashkenazic Jews have little to nothing in common with ancient Israelites. Little to no genetic relation. No religious commonality at all. Almost no cultural similarity as well.

Even so, I will be happy to bless Jews, like any other people, when they stop trying to destroy me, my family, my politics, my country, my religion and my way of life, and go home to Israel. Till then, I acknowledge my declared enemy.

54. Grayman March 23, 2017 6:26 PM"Lee was asked to go to guerilla warfare , but he refused"

I have read that his response was that "he was too old to become a bushwacker", or some such.

Later, when the criminal Reconstruction was in full swing, he was noted as saying that if he had known what surrender would have brought, he would have counseled fighting to the last man.

On a related note, I believe that if NB Forrest had been in command at Fts. Henry and Donelson, and subsequent commander of everything Confederate SW of NC, that the CSA in all likelihood would have won the war. (Sending assassins after Sherman, Sheridan, Thomas, and Grant, along with never letting Bragg hold over a captain's rank and Hood never getting over a division commander'position would not have hurt, either.)

I think Vox's point about the 1965 Act being the die-casting point is that the concept of an American nation was still congruent with reality. All the other events, destructive as they were, were potentially reversible with the same demographic makeup. They were certainly more easily reversed than the now-existent necessity of repatriating tens of millions of post-1965 invaders. He has said as much himself, and the argument makes sense to me.

showing that the CIA and NSA had been engaged in widespread systematic illegal surveillance including on Supreme Court justices, 156 other judges, and prominent private individuals, apparently for purposes of blackmail.

I knew it. Now who are the private individuals?

How are we supposed to Make America Great Again if Great Americans are beholden to these people?

the Lord God said He will bless those who bless Israel and curse those who curse Israel.

Jesus showed us how to bless those of "Israel" who reject Him in John 8:44.

This attempt to manipulate and control Christians with false interpretations of their own faith will eventually lead to Jews being expelled from Christian nations. Many of those doing it aren't even Jewish themselves, just anti-Christian or Zionist Churchian, so I guess they have nothing to lose; but I don't think the Jews will thank them for it in the end.

Being a citizen of Rome was very valuable and came with a set of rights that were high above those of non-citizens. It was bestowed upon outsiders usually only as a reward for their service to Rome. It was sought after by those who didn't have it. It's value encouraged those tho had it to defend it whether in word or in battle. It was a clear distinction between Romans and non-Romans. Our citizenship, the birthright earned by the blood, sweat and ingenuity of our European forefathers, has been given away. We must reclaim it.

Some context is lacking by the quoted blogger; it wasn't Marius & Sulla themselves, they were merely agents, and not causes, of the Republic's de facto destruction. The real cause of the Republic's fall was the changing historical conditions; the original Roman Republic was designed to rule over a relatively small city-state and not an empire; the government could no longer maintain stasis between the classes, triggering a brutal multi-generational class war that only ended with Caesar's seeming triumph of plebes, his assassination, and consolidation of power by Augustus.

I think it's proof that the Trump team finally realized that deal making with the Hitlery / Obama / Deep State cabal wont' work without sufficient leverage AND needed to be addressed sooner than later.

Thanks, dynamite stuff. For many years I have thought intelligence agency surveillance blackmail was the only possible explanation for the spinelessness in government, great to have some solid evidence coming out. My bet is still on it being Mossad and their people in NSA, GCHQ, etc. being behind most of the blackmail, just as they were behind Epstein's honey trap.

"I agree with them all, but gotta go with Looking Glass on Marbury v Madison."

Yeah. Even Commiefornia voted to cut off all benefits for illegal aliens in the 90s, but was overruled by the kritarchy. Same thing with homosexual "marriage" later on-- overruled by a homosexual judge.

An alternative theory is the tragedy of the commons, applied to government as a whole. Corruption yields the villains a fortune, but each individual in the country is out only a pittance. They're likely not even going to notice, much less stop it, but the corrupters can work tirelessly, since their livelihoods depend on it.

Even pre-Revolution we had corruption: just look at the early career of George Washington for a prime example. But that was early in the cycle, and our country was constantly expanding, so it could bear the costs easily. The difference is that we've stopped expanding, and the corruption's been going on so long that everyone feels how much poorer they're getting from it. We're at the point where the common grazing area has been stripped down to desert, and the fighting over the reduced resources is about to begin.

Imho, it was a poor analysis of the breakdown of the Roman republic.The breakdown had two main causes. The obvious one are the Marian reformes. No longer would the legions be manned by temporary peasent citizen soldiers with something to lose and with their main lojalty to one another, ie, the republic. But instead the legions were manned by landless destitutes who were in for the loot and the rewards and only had lojalty to their own General.

The second reason is class struggle. The patricians could decide war and peace. And got the majority of the spoils. The plebs payed the majority of the costs. In its most extreme form, during long conflicts a legionaire could be forced to stay out on campaign for several years. Thus not being able to tend his fields. Thus being forced into dept, being forced off the land. That was bought by the superrich by wealth they got from the war and then working the land with foreign slaves captured in the war. This process, that many romans made many attempts to stop, broke down the fabric of the republic.

Post a Comment

Rules of the blogPlease do not comment as "Anonymous". Comments by "Anonymous" will be spammed.